


To Die For Love (A Soldier's Song)

by bananasandroses (achuislemochroi)



Series: Whofic [35]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 4X13 (Journey's End), Angst, Character Study, F/M, Introspection, Tenth Doctor Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-13
Updated: 2009-10-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 06:49:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1595552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achuislemochroi/pseuds/bananasandroses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Between his landing on that beach and his leaving, he betrays her three times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Die For Love (A Soldier's Song)

**Author's Note:**

> Sparked off _Dulce Et Decorum Est_ , both the Wilfred Owen poem and the Latin quote (from Horace).  You’ll see what I mean when you’ve read it (I hope!)

_Dulce_

It may be the right decision.  He keeps telling himself it _is_ the right decision, the only – quite possibly the hardest, cruellest – one he could ever make.  And a grim satisfaction that he has come through it in any way intact clings to him.

_Dulce et_

The feeling lasts mere seconds.  What felt right but five minutes before turns swiftly into ashes and a sour, sickened feeling seems to settle in the pit of his stomach.  He hasn’t been able to fool her and even as he tries to shake her he knows her well enough, still, to know she isn’t going quietly.  If how he feels is any measure he knows he is hurting her terribly.

_Dulce et decorum_

And so he spins the agony out like spider’s silk; a long, protracted _adieu_ that changes nothing.  The sweetly poisonous words trip glibly from his tongue but taste of gall and ashes as he betrays her.   _I am he and he is me_.  He cannot bring himself to believe a syllable he’s saying and is acutely aware that neither can anybody else.

_Dulce et decorum est_

And as the pain increases past the level he can tolerate, he remains at her side because he cannot in truth force himself to tear himself away.  The wounded soldier of old basks in the light and life of the woman who saved him by teaching him how to live again, and he tries his hardest to burn this new vibrant version of her into his memories whilst knowing all the while there is no need.  For he who betrays her could not forget this shining star – a girl who was for a span Time itself, and yet who lives still.

_Dulce et decorum est pro_

His ship sends a melancholy sound into the air and he knows he must leave, must betray his hearts again.  He feigns indifference as he drinks her in, yet each of his senses is painfully attuned to her.  Their old simpatico has reasserted itself in the brief hours they’ve had together and although he is in agony he considers the happiness she brings him merely from her presence at his side thoroughly worth the pain.

_Dulce et decorum est pro amor_

Were it only so that he could bend time to his will!  Were it so he knows he could never leave her, not so soon after his hearts’ desire was realised.  But this farewell is no moveable feast but a fact that’s set, immovable, in time.  He _has_ to leave her.  And as she revisits their shared past, evoking the precious memory of the one thing that made his last visit to this godforsaken place even half-way bearable, his treacherous mind betrays them both as his lips refuse her the words his hearts both scream to say.

_Dulce et decorum est pro amor mori._

  



End file.
